The snow fort is waiting ~ December 28, 2000

David Heiller

Cοllin set out his plan shortly after arriving for Christmas last Friday. “What can we build?” he asked with a sly smile. He always asks that question when he comes for a visit, and he usually has an answer in mind before I can reply.

Α wagon. Stilts. A tree fort. These are past projects. What will it be this time, Uncle David?

“What are you thinking?” I asked back. Answering a question with a question is good strategy with an eight-year-old.

“How about a snow fort?” he asked with another smile.

I somehow knew that was coming. In fact, I had been thinking the same thing. But I let him lead the charge.

“Sure,” I said after a thoughtful look. “Where could we build it?”

“How about the ditch where Noah had his ice cave?”

“Good idea,” I answered. Funny, I had been thinking of that same spot.

“And maybe we could sleep in it,” he said.

“We could give it a try.” That was another thought that had been on my mind. Collin and I think alike, which is confusing to my wife. She thinks I am at least 14.

David and Collin after a fine day's
 project and Christmas dinner.

We looked over the spot and planned the attack. First, we shoveled the snow off the ground There was water under the snow in the bottom of the ditch, which is testimony to the insulating quality of snow. It wouldn’t take long for the slush to turn to ice. The temperature was four degrees below zero.

But we didn’t get cold. We were on a mission, and our important project was bigger than a little cold weather.

We made two sleeping benches, one on either side of the ditch. Collin wanted to lay down on his right away, but I told him that he had to let the snow harden for a couple hours.

For the roof, I suggested using some dimensional lumber from my lumber pile in the pole barn. We scrounged two 12-foot 2x6 boards and laid them on edge across the ditch. But that didn’t give us enough head room, so we went back for three more to lay on edge over these. I had to carry the boards, which were too heavy for Collin, who had somehow by now become my supervisor.

But the roof was still too low. So we went back for five more timbers. I carried them down and laid them flat on the other three. It looked plenty high enough.

Then we carried three tarps from the garage. We laid one on the benches. Two went over the top and ends of the fort. We shoveled snow on top and on one end. The tarps sagged with the weight of the snow, so I put another timber on top of the middle roof board and nailed it in place. Then I pulled the tarps tight and nailed a timber on top of each end roof board.

We carried three sleeping bags and two pads to the snow fort. I spread them on the benches. I told Collin he could use my bag, which is rated to minus 20 degrees. I would use the other two.

No matter what, David always told Collin 
stories in front of the fire before bed.
And there was ALWAYS a project.

For the rest of the afternoon and early evening, Collin was confident in his decision. He told everybody what we had planned, and he was met with no small amount of surprise, from his sister, from his cousins, from his parents, from my wife. You’re going to sleep outside with a weather forecast of minus 15 degrees? They thought we were crazy, although they didn’t come right out and say it.

But Collin grew quiet on the matter after supper, and during the boys’ turn in the sauna, with the temperature outside falling and the temperature inside pushing 150 degrees, his dad broke the news to me. Collin didn’t want to sleep in the snow fort.

That’s all right, I said to Collin. It’s not a problem. We’ll try it again some other time. My first instinct was to try to coax him into giving it the old college try. But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted him to lead the way, like he had done all day. You have to have your heart into winter camping for it to be a success.

I knew he felt bad for changing his mind, but I know it’s hard to camp out too close to home. The thought of a soft bed in the summer, or a warm bed in the winter, just 100 yards from the front door, is too hard to ignore.

And yes, a part of me was relieved when Collin changed his mind. It would have been fun to try, but it was fun to sleep inside too.

The day had been a great success anyway. “Process, not product,” as they say. The process had been great, for Collin and for me.

And the snow fort is still waiting...

‘Wow, that was a great Christmas’ ~ December 26, 2002

David Heiller

The house was spotless for at least five minutes on Saturday morning. The great “Company's Coming” ritual was done: dusting, sweeping, mopping, cleaning, organizing, and many other little jobs.

I stopped to marvel. Our house never looks like this, and it really shouldn’t, because it would then belong to someone else and not Cindy and me.

Then company came.

Three more adults, three more kids, one more dog. Both entryways filled up with coats and boots and snow-pants. Cheese Nips and pistachios smothered the counters. Cookies, cookies, everywhere.

Lots of cookie, lots of food, lots of joy!
Claire and Therese.

A dog kennel went into the laundry room. Kids books took their place of honor on the coffee table. Games and playing cards lay on the dίning room table.

Soon a Christmas movie was playing on the living room TV, and music poured from the kitchen radio. Dogs barked. People barked.

Now we’re talking Christmas!

It happens every year, when Cindy’s brother and sister and their families stay with us at Christmas. We get ready for their big rush by bulldozing our old interior and constructing a new one. And like I said, we clean, clean, clean.

Then they arrive and the new house soon looks like the old one, and then some. Neatness has no place at the holidays. It’s fine for a dinner and small talk, for a quick visit and a peck on the cheek. But in an extended family where everyone knows everyone else’s good habits and bad, the house soon looks like a huge, human salad bowl, and rightly so.

Full and busy at our house at Christmas.
Notice that my brother can still read a book?

It’s the ultimate compliment when a person can relax at your house under such conditions.

I sometimes dream of a big house with spare rooms for everyone. What would that be like at the holidays? Probably great. But it somehow never happened for us, and I doubt that it ever will. So we all adjust to the smaller house and the clutter. We dodge the boots in the porch and dogs in the dining room, and we relax faster than it takes to think about relaxing.

It’s a temporary thing, and that probably, helps. No, we couldn’t live like this for an extended period of time. But we know in the back of our minds that order will soon return. And then when it does, when the songs have been sung and the house is quiet and the shelves are back to normal, when the lights are put away and the empty canning jars start returning to the top of the fridge, we always say, “Wow, that was a great Christmas.”

I hope the same can be said for you as you celebrate the holidays in your own way.

Happy New Year and thank you to all the readers of the Askov Amerίcan.

Some priceless Christmas gifts ~ December 20, 1990

David Heiller

Christmas is a time of giving. Sometimes the gifts are worth money. Sometimes they are worth much more.

Take the gift of a phone call home. I called my mother last week, without really planning to. I’d just received a letter from her, and had written recently too. But I needed to talk to her.

I didn’t have much to say. Our Christmas plans, when we could meet in Minneapolis. She talked about the weather in Brownsville, the big snowstorm they had. Noah took the phone, and told her about his deer antler quest, how Grandma Marge at school had promised to bring him one. Then I took the phone again, lingering on small talk, until we said good bye.

After I hung up, I felt better. That calm old voice from home carried with it some inner strength that I needed. Now I realize that phone call was an unknowing gift from Mom.

How about the gift of a walk in the woods? We tramped down an abandoned township road on Saturday afternoon. Binti lead the way, sniffing for squirrels, criss-crossing into the woods on either side.

Binti was moving slower, but never 
turned down a walk, or a Christmas cookie!

It was a joy to watch her, because she’s 11½, and spends more and more of her time in front of the wood stove. She’s stiff in the rear, and almost totally deaf, but there she was, the old Binti, tail wagging, nose to the ground but always keeping us in sight with that radar that dogs seem to have, always knowing where they are and where YOU are.

I must have gone soft on the walk too, because when we stopped for a cup of tea and some cookies, we handed one to Binti. I repeat: WE GAVE A CHRISTMAS COOKIE TO OUR DOG. Never in Binti’s long history has this happened. She seemed to know it too, because she had the cookie chewed and swallowed before we could blink, like she didn’t want us to change our mind. Maybe she knew it was a Christmas gift.

Walks have a lot of gifts, like seeing a couple of deer take off from their snack of poplar bark, bounding across the trail in front of you, then watching a seven-year-old boy leave a slice of apple at that spot, for the deer to find as a treat.

Having that little boy’s hand fit like a glove into your hand as you walk, looking at tracks and searching the ground for the elusive deer antler. These are all great gifts.

I mostly did a ridiculous number of cookies myself,
but when I could get together with my friend
 Carolyn, we made sandbakkels. David loved them!

Cookies are, too. Cindy has been baking almost nonstop, with the help of us kids now and then: Santa’s Thumbprints and peppernuts, Russian teacakes and sugar cookies, rosettes and chocolate cookies.

The cookies seem to grow endlessly on the counter, row upon row, filling Tupperware and freezers and kids and dads. When I got up last Saturday morning, and saw a counter full of peanut blossoms, I thought for a split second, “Not more cookies!” But in the next instant, I came to my senses and realized, “You can never, I repeat, NEVER, have enough Christmas cookies.” Cookies are a Christmas gift, all right.

These are a few of those Christmas gifts that are worth more than anything you can find at the store. You’ve got your own special ones too, and I hope you enjoy them. Have a merry Christmas.

Don’t argue with Christmas miracles ~ December 22, 1988

David Heiller

SATURDAY, DEC. 17—A Christmas miracle in the making: Dee Zuk sits with nine children in the church pew, nine children under the age of six. At the front of the church, older kids are saying their parts for the Christmas program. They giggle and stammer and push and read from parts that they should have memorized. Director Mary Cronin leads them along, like Mike Ditka on the sidelines with the Chicago Bears, urging them to cooperate.

But Dee Zuk has those nine children lined up as quiet as the proverbial church mice which inhabit Faith Lutheran Church.

“Do you have a Christmas tree?” Dee asks.

“I have two trees, one upstairs and one downstairs,” Laura Horton answers, sitting on the right hand of Dee the Teacher Almighty.

“Do you have a dog?” she continues.

My son, Noah, answers that he has two, Ida and Binti.

Noah and Malika with their cousin Sarah during a family Christmas. These were little kids at the time of this performance! Extra cute and extra nerve-wracking.

“One for you and one for Mollie?” Dee asks. “No, both for me,” Noah answers.

Dee ushers the nine to the front of the church, like a duck leading her fledglings to water. Mollie, age three, sits next to Noah, who has yet to learn that it isn’t cool to sit next to your sister in a Christmas program.

Dee leads the little kids: “God sent Jesus down from heaven.” They all repeat after Dee, pointing their finger skyward, then arching it back to earth.

“Jesus taught us to love each other.” The kids fold their arms close to their chest, except for Mollie, who has her finger up her nose.

^“Jesus loves you and you and me.” They point their fingers at each other, then at themselves. Mollie takes her finger from her nose, puts it in her mouth.

“Because of His love, we are all His children.”

Their voices are strong with Dee leading them, but when she stops, they are struck dumb, which is another miracle for nine children under the age of six.

SUNDAY, DEC. 18—the miracle continued: Bev Peterson played Christmas hymns on the piano at the left side of the church, which filled up slowly but surely last Sunday morning, like churches do when children give their Christmas programs. Parents like me sat erect, on the edge of the pew; as if they were watching the Vikings play the Rams, and feeling just as jittery.

The piano rang out with Joy to the World, and the parents seemed to relax a bit. The 16-foot balsam Christmas tree next to Bev swayed at the top, as wind from the ceiling fan swished the tinsel back and forth. With the music, you could imagine that tree in the woods on a snowy morning, moving in a gentle breeze.

I sat in the fourth pew from the front, upon strict instructions from my wife, Cindy, who is also a Sunday school teacher. I didn’t know why I should sit so far up, but I don’t question Cindy on matters of religious faith and church etiquette. So I sat there, feeling conspicuous. I glanced over my shoulder and saw many other parents looking conspicuous. Their minds, like mine, were focused on their kids and the Christmas program. They were thinking: Would their children forget their lines? Maybe start crying, or pull up their dresses, or put their fingers in their nose? Maybe start the Christmas tree on fire?

Finally, the bell pealed, and 30 children marched forward, singing Oh Come, All Ye Children. They took their seats in the front, facing us. Cindy sat one pew ahead of me. We both stared at Mollie as she followed Noah up, jostling others to grab the chair on his left. Mollie saw us, smiled and waved. Noah joined her in waving. We both lowered our eyebrows and shook our heads. They stopped waving.

The program progressed, and it progressed well. Mary Cronin had worked a miracle that Mike Ditka would have been proud of. The older kids said their lines without help, holding the microphone like a stick of dynamite. They even showed some football razzle-dazzle, passing the mike quickly behind their backs to the next kid.

Then the pre-school part came. Dee knelt in front of her charges. The kids said their words loud and clear, while Dee whispered along. My eyes were glued to Mollie, hoping, even praying that she would keep her finger pointed to heaven instead of her nose. My prayer was answered. Their part ended, and it went perfectly.

And the miracles continued. The children sang Away in the Manger, and no one even noticed when Knute fell down in the back row. They sang Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, and no one blinked when Laura left her spot to confer with Dee in the front pew. Dee whispered a few magical words, and Laura returned to her place in front.

During Oh Christmas Tree, Mollie started to push Noah, grabbing him by the arm. Noah pushed back, and it looked like the start of a World Wrestling Federation match. Then Mollie glanced at her mom and dad. Actually, her head was turned by the force of our glares. In that instant it suddenly dawned why Cindy had asked me to sit at the front of the church. Our eyes blazed like lasers at Mollie. I’m not a pretty sight even when I smile, but the look I gave Mollie would have sent dogs howling for cover. With Cindy in front, Mollie suddenly was staring down a double barreled shotgun. She put Noah’s arm down, and looked straight ahead.

The program ended as we all sang Go Tell it on the Mountain. Then the little kids returned to their parents’ side, and you could almost hear half the congregation, young parents like me, breath a sigh of relief, and you could almost feel the other half, the grandmas and grandpas who have weathered this ordeal many times, bursting with pride.

Mollie slid in next to me. “Do you have any gum, Daddy?” she asked. I pulled a stick out, and broke it in half, giving part to her and part to Noah. Mollie started chewing, then cuddled up close. “I love you, Dad,” she said, looking at me.

“I love you,” I answered.

Maybe it was the Dentyne, maybe it was Christmas. Whatever it was, I didn’t care. You don’t question miracles.

Feeling the Glow of Christmas ~ December 30, 1993

David Heiller

Dear Grandma:

You’re probably looking for my annual Christmas letter to you. Practice for the Christmas program at church started three weeks ago. That’s about when Christmas starts for me.

Noah didn’t have a part. He just had to sing four songs with the other third and fourth graders. But that was more than enough. It wouldn’t be cool for a 10-year-old to admit that singing was fun.

Noah and Grandma Schnick. 
David wrote lots of letters to Grandma when she
was alive, and didn't stop after she passed.

But his actions said something else. Like when he warmed up in the car going to church on Sunday by making up a song. It was something about a missing cat. Mollie joined in at the end of each verse, and harmonized on the chorus. Cindy and I had big grins in the front seat. It was a great song! We didn’t dare interrupt them, being from the Land of Bland and all.

Mollie had a long part, but she didn’t have to memorize it, so she did all right. She played Jingle Bells on the piano too, before the program. She had asked her piano teacher to come hear her, and of course Pat did. Pat had told her to practice 10 times a day in order to get it right. Mollie had obeyed. If we had told her, she would have refused, but not for Pat. Pat is a cross between a grandmother and a saint to Mollie. Something like you were to me.

We sat with Pat on Sunday. We all held our breath as Mollie took her seat. Mary Cronin turned around from the pew ahead of us and gave us a smile of encouragement, as if we were playing, which is how we felt.

Mollie and her piano, the last minute practice.

Mollie placed the music on the piano, and sat up straight in her white dress, and played it loud and clear and perfectly. It’s funny how a simple song like Jingle Bells could sound so good and so pure coming from the hands of an eight year old. It lasted all of 30 seconds, but Handel’s Messiah couldn’t have sounded better to us.

Cindy went up afterward and gave her a hug. Mollie beamed, and said “Oh Mom!”

Christmas pageants sum up the good things about Christmas. No greedy commercialism. No gaudy lights. Just a lot of good songs, and a bunch of kids acting out a story that has a baby for a star.

The girls were dressed in bright calico dresses, and towered over boys their own age. They tried to look like teenagers, but their voices hit the high notes in pitch that reminded us that they are still just kids.

Yet as they stood up there, you saw how they had grown. Pretty soon they’ll be too old for this. Too soon.

The boys huddled together and looked aloof. But their true nature broke through here and there, like when they would smile when they saw their parents. Or like when Noah sang the chorus of “Angels We Have Heard On High.” Gloria, In Excelsis Deo. He sang it “Gloria, It Is Chelsea’s Day-O.” Chelsea Cronin was standing next to him, and I could tell what he was doing by the way Chelsea was smiling. It was aimed at her. I couldn’t yell at him too much though, since I had taught him the verse.

Cindy and I sat and watched it all, smiling with other parents. I put my arm around Cindy’s shoulder, and it felt good there, like that’s where it belonged.

Grandma had a way with those little ones.
Grandma Schnick and Malika.

Maybe you saw that from your seat in the Balcony.

I thought about you Sunday. I liked it when you would watch me in the Christmas programs back in Brownsville. You were always so proud. You never said so, but I could tell.

After the program, Pat gave Noah and Mollie Christmas presents, and told them what a good job they had done. Noah wondered when he could open it, and Pat told him right now, which made him happy. He’s anxious for Christmas to come. To him it comes with presents.

Someday he’ll know it comes with people like Pat, and with Christmas programs that have a baby for a star.

Then we went to the home of some friends. We ate a snack, and sat at their table. It felt good to talk. As we were leaving, we gave one another Christmas hugs.

Riding home in the dark, we felt the glow of Christmas. It had arrived for good that day with those good friends, with thoughtful people like Pat, with the boys and girls of the Christmas pageant.

And with the memory of people like you. Merry Christmas, Grandma.

Love, David

Shining so clearly ~ January 2, 1992

David Heiller

The stars stood sharply in the cold Christmas Eve sky as Noah (nine) and I headed to Faith Lutheran Church last Tuesday night. I pointed out Orion, who stood guard over our mailbox.

Orion usually guards the outhouse when I see him, but the season is moving, and Orion is moving with it. He’ll visit the outhouse in a few hours.

I pointed out the three stars of his belt, the stars that outlined his broad shoulders, his knees, his sword. Noah liked the sword part.

We headed up the road. Α moon just-past-full was rising on our right, like a squished orange. We watched it climb above the snow and brush. It would soon blot out the weaker stars of the sky, leaving only stalwarts like Orion and the Big Bear.

The Bear arched above Couillard’s house, but I couldn’t see a bear. I’ve never seen the Bear in Ursula Major, but it’s hard not to see its more common name and shape: the Big Dipper.

I pointed the dipper out to Noah, and he spotted it right away. I told him to follow the last two stars of the dipper out a bit, and he could find the North Star. “It stands all alone. It’s right above the road. That’s how I know this road runs due north and south,” I said.”

“I see it,” he answered with excitement.

“Stars were important a long time ago,” I told Noah in my official father voice that will soon bore him to tears. He’s not quite that old yet though, so he answered, “Why?”

“People can tell where they are by the stars. They use a sextant and it tells them right where they are on a map,” I said.

David and his kids circa 1992

“Like a compass,” he said.

“Yeah, kind of,” I answered, not being an expert with either instrument.

“Hey Dad, the moon is moving with us,” Noah said. It did look that way. It seemed to keep a few steps ahead on our right. Now it hung over the open field east of the church, away from the brush.

There was mystery in the night, with Orion and this moon and the North Star and all.

At church, we joined the rest of the family for the candlelight service. We listened as Pastor Sjoblom read passages from the Bible, passages without heavy lessons. Passages that told a simple story, which kept us listening and smiling even at this late hour.

We listened to the simple refrains from a clarinet played by Karla Kropp. No fancy organ to pound and pump us up, just single notes by a girl, strung together into sounds that fit the little church like a warm mitten.

We lit candles. The yellow light glowed off faces of friends and neighbors, wives and husbands, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and most important, of children.

Mollie stood proudly at my side, holding her candle up straight like the pastor had told us. Her eyes glistened with the light.

We sang Silent Night. I remembered how my Grandma Heiller would treat us with the German version, “Stine Nacht,” when we begged her enough, back when my Candlelight was young.

Then the wonders of candlelight at church on Christmas Eve returned from somewhere deep inside, deep in the past, and warmed me once again.

Afterward, Noah and I hit the road again, back the quarter mile to home. The words to an old Christmas time came to mind:

(Listen to the song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpizGdABJkI)

‘Twas on a night like this, a little babe was born.
The shepherds gathered ‘round, to guard him till the dawn.   Above them shone a star, a star so wondrous light,
That never since in all those years have they seen one half so bright.
Shining so truly, shining so brightly,   guiding their footsteps from afar.   It led them through the night;   A path to love and brotherhood   by following its light.

We walked home quietly, followed by the moon, and the North Star, and the Big Bear, and Orion, and those other witnesses to the star that made this all possible.

Maybe it was on a night like this...

Missing shoes: a sign of Christmas ~ December 9, 1993

David Heiller

The missing shoes convinced me that Christmas is here. The missing wedding ring was the first clue, but the shoes convinced me.

David and the kids at the kitchen table.

The wedding ring disappeared on Monday morning. I had showed the kids at breakfast how shiny the ring was. It had been polished a few days earlier. Noah looked at the ring, then Μalika looked at the ring. Then the ring was gone.

I first noticed it at work. I reached for my finger to feel the ring. It’s a habit I have when I talk to pretty women (like my wife). It was gone.

All day my finger felt naked. We called the school, and asked if she had taken it to school. She hadn’t. We believed her, sort of. She knows the value of that ring to me. She wouldn’t give it away, or trade it for some Skittles, not on purpose at least. But drug addicts know the dangers of drugs, and still take them. That’s the way my daughter can be with shiny gold things.

When we got home, we looked all over the house for it. Mollie said she remembered putting it on the dining room table. That’s the table that you can’t see the top of, because it is covered with Christmas ornaments and candles and wise men.

My stomach started fluttering. The ring is handmade. There’s only one other like it, and my wife wears it.

Then Cindy went to turn on the radio, and there was the ring, and suddenly everyone was forgiven, including the person who probably left it there—me.

As for my shoes, they still haven’t turned up. I took them off somewhere on Monday night, and Tuesday morning they were gone. They might be on the dining room table too, and we might find them after Christmas.

Meanwhile I’m wearing a black shiny pair that I last wore on my wedding day in 1980. They are too tight. That happens when you have babies, I hear.

Christmas is a beautiful time of year. It’s also a time when people forget where they put their wedding rings and shoes.

Malika could turning all things,
 live or pretend, into her friends.

It’s a time when eight-year-old girls forget about their Barbies and play with Mary and Joseph and the three wise men instead. I didn’t know they could carry on such interesting conversations. They were mostly silent when I was a kid. Not to my daughter.

It’s a time to walk through the woods looking for that perfect tree, and finding it along with a few other treasures, like the paw prints of a wolf, and a pileated woodpecker that laughs and flies away like a tiny jet.

If you are eight, it’s a time to wear the skirt that is supposed to go underneath the Christmas tree. The skirt looked good on Mollie. Happy Petersen of Askov made it, and it made Mollie happy. It fit her too. She looked like she stepped out of a Jan Brett children’s book when she wore it. I didn’t think she would give it up, but like the ring, I was wrong. Cindy put it under the tree on Monday night. It looks good there too.

David and Red at the Askov American office.

Christmas is also a time to count your blessings. Red Hansen is doing that these days. He had double bypass heart surgery on November 12, and if you wonder why Askov seemed a bit lonely recently, it’s because Red hasn’t been roaming the streets.

He finally got the okay to drive last Friday, so he stopped in the office for a visit on Monday. He said he’s feeling better. Then he mentioned that he has a new valve in his heart that came from a pig. Apparently the heart of a pig is similar to the heart of a human, which explains a lot about humans.

Red was glad he got the pig valve, instead of the other kind that sends a ball through a wire cage. The other kind is like a check valve, he said. It sounds more like Chutes and Ladder to me. It makes a steady clicking sound, he said, and Red worried that this might have thrown off his rhythm with his accordion.

I allowed as maybe you can get them to change their beat. Yeah Doc, I’d like a heart valve in three-quarter time, please. I’m a waltz man.

Red also wondered how old the pig was that graciously donated its valve. What if it was an old codger, and had only another year to go? Red worries about things like that, with his tongue in his cheek.

Think about it. And let me know if you find a pair of brown shoes.